I didn't even know about this news until I saw this post.

I think that we don't know enough about how it was done to say whether phones can be targeted in the same way.

I have a really bad feeling that discussion about this topic can break one of two three rules: don't discuss politics here, don't make unverified claims here, don't discuss conspiracy theories. If these rules are broken, the thread can be locked and even removed.

Edit: looks like a supply chain attack and I can't count to three apparently.

The most probable assumption would be that the pagers have been filled with an explosive in some way and activated with a message.

TheAwesomenESQ if pagers are susceptible to such technology, are cellphones next?

So far it does not seem that there is evidence that pagers in general are subject to this phenomenon.

Don't think too much into it. The lithium ion batteries in pagers would not have caused an explosion this large on their own. It was more than likely a supply chain attack that included additional explosive material being added.

The Wall Street Journal cited a source as saying the affected devices were from a new shipment that Hezbollah had received in recent days. A Hezbollah official also told the newspaper some people had felt the pagers heat up before the blasts.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd7xnelvpepo

seems a more plausible explanation.

We've left this post up because people are endlessly asking "can my Pixel explode now?" to which the answer is obviously no. That's not an invitation to make comments that are political in nature. They will be promptly removed, and if they are made after users have read this post, we might have seriously consider a suspension.

Please respect that politics do not belong in this community.

    This may sound like a stupid question, but can GrapheneOS somehow detect foreign objects in the body of a device? This "operation" was conducted with the cooperation of a European manufacturer. As best as I can understand, these pagers were not intercepted by Mossad and modified, rather the modifications were made by the manufacturer.

    matchboxbananasynergy Please respect that politics do not belong in this community.

    That wasn't the case in 2022 with the references in the code of conduct. I hope that this new turn could revise it.

      • Edited

      Hat from the code of conduct:

      Simply put, community discussions should be the following:
      Respectful and kind
      About GrapheneOS
      About features and code, not the individuals involved

      i think this pretty well excludes politics. i don't know why people expect politics to be in-bounds in a technical community anyway, especially the politics that were happening above. the rare non-GOS threads are allowed i assume because they are still technical in nature.

      • Hat replied to this.

        itsjpb Read again the Acknowledgments part.

        Some professional computers have a sensor to detect if the computer has been open. This requires a locked boot loader to prevent man in the middle from resetting the sensor history. We can imagine a password being sent at the ordering stage to unlock the phone.

        The supply chain is very sensitive during a time of conflict.

          4 days later

          Hat Read again the Acknowledgments part.

          i did and am still unsure what you mean. can you clarify?